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The Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won

Senator Barack Obama greeted supporters during a campaign rally in Greensboro, N.C., on Saturday.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

OXFORD, Miss. — The presidential campaigns roared out of here Saturday morning facing a task arguably as difficult, and as important, as the debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain itself: influencing the public perception of who won an encounter that produced no clear winner or loser.

It is a perennial battle, but rarely has it seemed more important than this year, with both candidates facing a restless electorate and locked in a tight battle that could be altered by the perceptions set by the debates.

To this end, the Obama campaign worked overnight to release, in the early morning, an advertisement criticizing Mr. McCain for failing to utter the words “middle class.” It was unclear whether Mr. Obama’s campaign was spending a lot of money to broadcast the spot, or whether it was directed more at the opinion leaders who would be appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows or writing about the debate in their columns for the next few days.

For its part, the McCain campaign had already released an Internet video citing several instances in which Mr. Obama had said he agreed with his rival’s positions, a talking point that began to emerge even as the debate was going on here Friday night.

The activity was part of an intensive battle to shape public perceptions in the vital closing weeks of a razor-thin race. And it reflected a common belief in presidential politics: That many viewers base their judgment not necessarily on debate performance but on what they read and see in the days afterward.

On Saturday, Mr. McCain flew home to Northern Virginia and made phone calls from his campaign headquarters in Arlington in an effort to push along a deal on the financial bailout, as he tried to show himself as a leader in times of crisis.

Mr. McCain, of Arizona, gave his own opinion on his performance Friday night. Speaking to Representative Charles W. Pickering Jr., Republican of Mississippi, he was recorded by a television crew as saying, “I was a little disappointed the media called it a tie, but I think that means when they call it a tie that means we win.”

Mr. Obama returned to the campaign trail in North Carolina, where he stuck to the campaign’s post-debate theme. “He didn’t even say the words ‘middle class,’ ” said Mr. Obama, of Illinois. “He didn’t say the words ‘working people.’ ”

Even as they sought to mold perceptions from the previous night, the campaigns were embarking on a similar public relations exercise in preparation for the next two debates, one Thursday between Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the other between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama in a town-hall-style setting on Oct 7.

Speaking with reporters on a conference call Saturday morning, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, called Ms. Palin “a gifted debater.” Noting Mr. McCain’s preference for town hall formats, and using the transparent, expectations-setting hyperbole common for both campaigns, Mr. Plouffe said he would be “thrilled” if “we can just escape relatively unscathed.”

Mr. McCain’s campaign, meanwhile, sent out a series of e-mail messages attacking Mr. Biden, and released a new advertisement citing Mr. Biden’s disagreement with Mr. Obama on a war financing bill during the Democratic primary battle.

To the criticism that Mr. McCain had not said the words “middle class” in the debate, his aides countered that Mr. Obama had not used the word “victory” in reference to Iraq.

The positioning was in keeping with what is now a quadrennial rite, in which campaigns go full-bore to convince the news media, and ultimately the public, that their candidate won — or more than that, to argue that a debate spotlighted some sort of character or issue defect in their opponent. This often involves highlighting some supposedly fatal mistake by their opponent: Al Gore’s sighs in a 2000 debate, President George Bush’s peek at his wristwatch while debating Bill Clinton in 1992.

In this case, Mr. McCain’s campaign seized on a reference Mr. Obama made to a bracelet he had received from the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Mr. McCain had just spoken about one given to him, and saying he had one, too, Mr. Obama appeared to pause momentarily when mentioning the soldier’s name, Sgt. Ryan David Jopek. Mr. McCain’s aides sought to portray this as a gaffe.

The Obama campaign tried to seize on Mr. McCain’s attacks and frequently serious demeanor to portray him as angry. They said he had not exercised the courtesy of even returning Mr. Obama’s gaze, suggesting that he was being disrespectful or condescending to his rival.

While such criticisms may seem, on first glance, trivial, they are the kind of issues — as the sighing Mr. Gore and the watch-checking Mr. Bush can attest — that can catch fire and influence public perception. They can also put a candidate off guard for the next debate.

Photo

Senator John McCain met with supporters Friday night at a rally in Oxford, Miss., after debating Senator Barack Obama.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

But the general sense was that the debate had not changed the static landscape of the overall campaign. An anchor on the Fox News Channel went so far as to tell a guest, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, “They could have used you on the debate last night.” Mr. Huckabee had won high marks for quips in the Republican primary debates.

Both campaigns emerged Saturday morning with what they presented as evidence of their successes, including competing declarations of victory from various commentators and editorial boards. Mr. Obama appeared to have an edge in the various snap polls taken the night of the debate, though these are notoriously unreliable.

For both campaigns, the effort to frame perceptions involves not just boring down on the minutiae of the debate performances but also trying to advance an overall narrative of the race.

On Saturday, Mr. Obama’s aides declared that he had passed a threshold test: convincing a huge national audience that he could be commander in chief. They also said he had exceeded expectations on delivering his economic message to struggling Americans.

Mr. McCain’s campaign argued that Mr. Obama had failed to allay voters’ concerns about his qualifications. They expressed pride in the frequency with which Mr. McCain told Mr. Obama he did not “understand” various international matters.

“It was a very tough debate, but I don’t think our candidate went over the line,” said Mr. McCain’s closest adviser, Mark Salter, adding that he “stayed on offense in a respectful way.”

The war over shaping the post-debate narrative got off to an exceptionally early start, beginning, in fact, even before the event occurred.

Mr. McCain’s campaign actually declared victory as early as 10 a.m. Friday, hours before the debate took place and even before he had agreed to take part in it. In what aides said was a mix-up, The Wall Street Journal posted an advertisement on its Web site 12 hours early that showed Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance. “McCain Wins Debate!” read the text.

A reader of The Washington Post spotted it and alerted one of the paper’s blogs, The Fix, which posted it before the red-faced McCain campaign removed it.

It was an embarrassing, yet telling, false start to the most important battle to shape perceptions of the election year so far, one pitting sophisticated war rooms against each another in an all-out effort to harness an increasingly fractured new media.

“This is the Super Bowl,” said Mr. McCain’s national spokesman, Tucker Bounds.

“We will be looking to accentuate the key turning-point moments to emphasize our points,” Mr. Bounds added in an interview before the debate.

Mr. Bounds believed he had found one in Mr. Obama’s reference to the soldier’s bracelet, writing in an e-mail message later, “ ‘Bracelet,’ is the moment.” A YouTube clip followed minutes later.

Similarly, Mr. Obama’s aides seized upon the fact that Mr. McCain had not used the words “middle class,” highlighting it for reporters in talking points, interviews, their advertisement and in Mr. Obama’s campaign appearance Saturday.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: A Day After McCain and Obama Face Off, a Debate Over Who Won. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe